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Cakewalk (Ruthanna Boris)


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See December 2006 Commentary magazine for letter (Jules Cohn) about Louis Moreau Gottschalk in the NYCB repertory. Teachout, in a piece about the neglect of Gottschalk's music in America, mentioned Mr. B's Tarantella, failed to mention Ruthanna Boris's use of Gottschalk (suggested by Lincoln Kirstein) in Cakewalk.

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See December 2006 Commentary magazine for letter (Jules Cohn) about Louis Moreau Gottschalk in the NYCB repertory. Teachout, in a piece about the neglect of Gottschalk's music in America, mentioned Mr. B's Tarantella, failed to mention Ruthanna Boris's use of Gottschalk (suggested by Lincoln Kirstein) in Cakewalk.

Thanks for the heads-up -- I knew Ms Boris in Seattle in the 1970's and 80's. Cakewalk is a charming work, and I wish it were performed more widely.

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Cakewalk is really good theater -- Oakland Ballet used to do it, really well, under Ms Boris's supervision, with a wonderful good spirit. It's light vaudeville, but wonderfully constructed, and that kind of hilarity is a wonderful thing, and has such high spirits it's good medicine. Abra Rudisill as the Queen of the Swamp Lilies threw herself off a mighty tall cliff and was caught by Ron Thiele, I'll never forget it, one of the most exciting things I've ever seen onstage.

And Richard Chen See, now with Paul Taylor, was one of the interlocutors, and his batterie was dazzling, and sly, and full of personality -- she made a wonderful use of the Italian technique there, and he realized it to a fantastic degree.

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Ms. Boris was (and perhaps still is) living in Albany, CA just north of Berkeley. As recently as 5 or so years ago she was swimming to keep fit. She is more frail now, according to a friend who lives in her building. I "Googled" her quickly and saw in the ibdb (Broadway database) that she was in/choreographed "Two on the Aisle," a Revue from 1951-1952. This Revue was also mentioned in the papers this past week because Betty Comden (R.I.P.) wrote the lyrics -- with Aldoph Greene.

Not only do I remember "Cakewalk," but I saw "Two on the Aisle," as a relative of mine was in it! Boy, do I feel old. Somehow, all this is flowing together.......

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In Balanchine's Ballerinas (p.68) Boris describes how she had turned down Balanchine's invitation to join Ballet Society in order to dance Giselle with Denham, who had previously contracted her for the ballet, and how Balanchine refused to let her join the Company when she returned:

I was in great shape--dancing up a storm. I was really marvelous. After about a month I went to see George again. I said, "George, can you give me a job? I'm a dancer." He took my hand and looked deep into my eyes and said, "If Anna Pavlova would come back from the grave I have no place."

So I went back to Lincoln and he said, "If that's the way it is, that's the way it is. But look, we need a ballet and you're a choreographer. Do a ballet and give yourself the leading role in it. Balanchine will see you on stage. I don't care what you do, but use costumes, because if we do one more ballet in leotards the critics will kill us."

And that's how I cam to do Cakewalk. I didn't give myself the leading role in it, because I used the women who had the qualities I needed. I needed some bombast...

Edited to Add:

And this, from Boris in Repertory in Review (p.121), picking up from where Kirstein urged her to choose something with costumes:

In the warehouse I came across the costumes from Blackface, which had been a very serious ballet about black and white in the South in the antebellum period, and when I saw them, the idea of Cakewalk--a classical ballet in the form of a iminstrel show--was born...

I knew I needed music with an early American feeling, but not Stephen Foster. Lincoln suggested Gottschalk, whom nobody had heard of then--except for Balanchine, because Gottschalk had been famous in Russia. I did a lot of research on minstrels and discovered that around the period of Giselle [1942], minstrel shows were putting on caricatures of this kind of ballet. Hortense, Queen of the Swamp Lillies, is a kind of Giselle. And of course everybody was very busy with necrophilia in those days. Finally, I found a lady in her eighties who had been a cakewalk dancer and I took some lessons from her.

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And this, from Boris in Repertory in Review (p.121)
Lincoln suggested Gottschalk, whom nobody had heard of then--except for Balanchine, because Gottschalk had been famous in Russia. I did a lot of research on minstrels and discovered that around the period of Giselle [1942], minstrel shows were putting on caricatures of this kind of ballet. Hortense, Queen of the Swamp Lillies, is a kind of Giselle. And of course everybody was very busy with necrophilia in those days. Finally, I found a lady in her eighties who had been a cakewalk dancer and I took some lessons from her.

As always, we can count on Nancy Reynolds to have the most interesting nuggets and the greatest depth. Thanks, Helene for digging that up!

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